Part 6 (1/2)
”That is what Ed. would like,” declared Herbert. ”He said it was no use calling Sunday a day of rest unless one could get all the rest one wanted, and it was hardly worth while for him to get up at all on a day when he couldn't fish or shoot or go out in his boat.”
”The young barbarian! After all the care and pains expended on his bringing up. What shall we do about it, Rosy?”
”Call him again!” said Herbert, who, with the ever-fertile mind of tender youth, was never dest.i.tute of practical suggestions.
”Bright boy! run at once and ring the bell just outside his door.” As the child departed to make the clangour, so much more delightful to his own ears than to those for whom it was intended, Eva observed:
”But he came in so late last night, papa, and looked very tired.”
The Commodore patted the head of his little girl, but he continued to direct towards her elder sister a glance of half-humorous inquiry.
Poor Rose knitted her pretty brows in troubled perplexity. She had been informed in the ”Advice to Young Women,” ”Duties of Womanhood,”
and other ethical works of the day, that a sister's influence is illimitable, and she felt besides an added weight of responsibility towards her motherless sister and brothers. ”I don't know, papa,” she said at last, ”unless we all take to the backwoods, live in a wigwam, and feast on the fruits of the chase. Edward chafes a good deal under the restraints of civilized life.”
”Ah, here comes the prodigal son!” joyously exclaimed Eva, who ran to meet her favourite brother, oblivious of the smiles produced by her unflatteringly inapt remark.
”Don't kill any calf for me,” entreated Edward, thrusting his younger sister's straight yellow locks over her face, until it was hard to say where her features ended and the back of her head began. ”I deserve it, but I don't like it. Veal is my detestation.”
”Upon my word,” said the old gentleman, looking very hard at a discoloured spot just above the left eye of his eldest born, ”it looks as though I had been trying to kill the prodigal instead of the calf.
That's a bad bruise, my boy.”
”'Tis, sir,” responded Edward, in a tone which implied that meek a.s.sent was all that could be expected from him to a proposition so very self-evident. He felt uncomfortably conscious that the eyes of the a.s.sembled family were upon him, and glanced half enviously at Eva, as though the ability to shake a sunny mane over one's face at will was something to be thankful for. The breakfast bell roused them from a momentary silence, but the shadow of this mysterious bruise seemed to follow them even to the table. Herbert and Eva, aged respectively ten and twelve, had that superabundant love of information so characteristic of their tender years. They sat in round-eyed silence, bringing the battery of their glances to bear upon their unfortunate brother, who at last could endure it no longer.
”Upon my life!” he exclaimed, ”one would think I was the governor-general, or some wild animal in a menagerie, to become the object of so much concentrated and distinguished attention.”
”Which would you say he was, Eva?” asked Herbert.
”Which what?” inquired that young lady.
”Sir Peregrine Maitland, or a wild animal?”
”Oh, Sir Peregrine, of course. See what a lofty, scornful way he has of looking at us. And yet he is not really proud; he is willing to sit down with us at our humble board, just as though he was a common person.”
”Children!” said Rose with soft reproach, but her voice trembled, and the imps were subjugated only outwardly.
”Anything particular going on in Barrie?” queried the Commodore, turning to his eldest son.
”Really, I can't say. I haven't been over in several days.”
”Oh, I imagined you were there last night.”
”I never go there at night,” protested the young man, with unnecessary vehemence. It was clear to him now that his father and sister held a very low opinion of him indeed. Probably they thought he had been hurt in some vulgar tavern brawl, or drunken street fight. The idea was loathsome to him. He had not a single low taste or trait of character.
”I'm afraid,” said Herbert, shaking his head with mock regret, ”that you are a very wild fellow.”
”He means that you are very fond of the wilds,” interpreted Rose, hurriedly endeavouring to avert the threatened domestic storm. ”Eva,”
she continued, taking up that irrepressible damsel before she could give utterance to the uncalled-for remark, which was but too evidently burning upon her lips, ”do you know your catechism?”
”Yes,” replied her sister, in rather an aggrieved tone, for she did not relish this change in the conversation, ”I know it--to a certain extent.”